November 24

1221 – The forces of Genghis Khan defeats those of Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, Shah of the Khwarazm Empire at the Battle of the Indus, completing the Mongol conquest of Central Asia.

1642 – Dutch explorer Abel Tasman discovers an island he calls Van Diemen’s Land n honor of the Governor of the Dutch East Indies, which is later renamed Tasmania.

1832 – The South Carolina legislature passes the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring that the Federal import tax Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 that helped New England states but less Southern states, null and void in the state, beginning a political crisis between the state and the federal government that would not be resolved until March of the next year.

1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

1877 – Anna Sewell’s novel Black Beauty is published.

1917 – In Milwaukee, 9 members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed when a bomb – suspected to have been planted by the Galleanist  faction of anarchists – is found at a church and explodes after being taken to the police office, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001.

1943 – Off Tarawa Atoll, the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed by the IJN submarine I-175 and sinks, killing 650 service men, among them PO3 Doris ‘Dorie’ Miller, who was awarded the Navy Cross for actions during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor and which Ford Class carrier CVN-81 will be named after.

1944 – The 73rd Bombardment Wing launches the first B-29 bombing attack on Tokyo from the Northern Mariana Islands.

1963 – On live TV, Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters.

1969 – The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to land on the Moon.

1971 – During an airline hijacking, a man calling himself Dan Cooper (aka D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money.

1989 – After a week of mass protests against the Communist regime known as the Velvet Revolution, Miloš Jakeš and the entire Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party resign from office, bringing an end to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia.

2016 – The government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia People’s Army  – FARC – sign a revised peace deal, ending the country’s more than 50 year long civil war.